Practical Atheism As the Lowest Common Denominator

by Thomas A. Droleskey

 

To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

 

Many articles on this site have documented the religious indifferentism that was at the root of the founding of the United States of America. Although some Catholic apologists of the founding have contended time and time again that the framers of the Constitution meant to protect the "religious liberty" of all Americans, including the tiny minority of Catholics that lived in the nascent country in the ninth decade of the Eighteenth Century as the multiplicity of religious sects made it impossible for there any one particular religion recognized by the Constitution, the plain fact of the matter is that the framers sought to protect the "rights" of irreligion just as much as the "rights" of those who had a particular denominational belief, including Catholics. (See also Chester Riley, Call Your Office and Still Utterly Defenseless Against Itself.)

It is no defense of the thought of the American founders to point out that many of them were believing Protestants as all forms of Protestantism are based on a rejection of substantial parts of the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. Protestantism is heretical. It is displeasing to God, Who loathes every false religion, including each and every Protestant denomination, founded as each is upon a corruption of the true Faith. Protestantism began as a diabolically-inspired revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to effect man's return to Him through His Catholic Church.

Thus it is one of the saddest commentaries on the corrupting effects of Protestantism upon the minds and hearts of Catholics in the United States of America to note that most Catholics believing that some kind of "generic" Christianity is pleasing to God and is "good enough" to provide the framework for personal and social order. It is not. Protestantism is not Christianity any more than devil worship is as each is from the devil himself. We do not exalt theological and liturgical errors as the basis of personal and social order. God does not do this. Why so so many Catholics in the United States of America do so.

The corrupting effects of Protestantism upon the minds and hearts of Catholics in the United States of America produced the heresy of Americanism, which was and remains an effort to "modify" the expression of the Faith in the midst of a pluralistic culture to such an extent that Catholics become convinced it is indeed virtuous to remain silent about the Faith and that there is no need to even pray for, no less speak about, the necessary of the conversion of men and their nations to the Social Reign of Christ the King as It must be exercised by the Catholic Church. Indeed, most Catholics in the United States of America, no matter where they fall along the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide, have never even heard of the Social Reign of Christ the King as the most of the true bishops that served in this country prior to the "Second" Vatican Council never spoke about this doctrine, preferring to believe that the American founding gave Catholics all that they need to practice their Faith without state-sponsored persecution, a false belief that resulted in the triumph of the Americanist spirit at the "Second" Vatican Council, especially in the last two decrees, Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae, that that false council issued on December 7, 1965.

God does not consider the ethos of Protestantism and/or of Judeo-Masonry to be acceptable to Him or that such an ethos can serve as the foundation of a just and enduring social order. The only reason that some semblance of social order was maintained in this country until the 1960s was the fact that true priests were offering Holy Mass, thereby giving glory to the Most Blessed Trinity and adding Actual Graces into the world. That's what made possible social order in the United States of America for so long. That,, not the Constitution and its indifference to the Social Reign of Christ the King. There is a direct relationship between the offering of true Mass and social order. The world will come to its end when the last true priest has died and the world is thus deprived of Actual Graces.

"Where there is no Mass, there is no Christianity." No, this is not "my" teaching. This is the teaching of the Catholic Church:

"Where there is no Mass," writes one of the Fathers of the English Oratory, "there is no Christianity." The reason is plain. Christ's life was one of sacrifice--not merely of the figurative sacrifice of praise and prayer, but one of outward act, of suffering and of death. His religion must be like Himself: it must be the continuation of the divine human life that He led upon earth, representing and perpetuating, by some sacred rite, the sacrifice that began in the womb of Mary and ended upon the cross of Calvary. That rite is the holy Mass. Do we always realize it as such? Does the conviction sink deep into us, when offering, or assisting at the adorable sacrifice, that Jesus is re-enacting, in our presence, the mysteries of His life and death?

The altar of the Mass is the holy house of Nazareth, the city of Bethlehem, the Egyptian place of exile, the hill of Calvary, the garden-tomb in which Our Saviour's corpse reposed, and the Mount of Olives from which He ascended. The Passion, it is true, is that which is primarily represented and continued in the holy Mass; yet the prayers and rites of the sacrifice refer, at times, to other mysteries. Thus the dropping of a part of the sacred host into the chalice, before the Agnus Dei, represents the reunion of Christ's soul with His body and blood on the morning of the Resurrection. For a description of the many and beautiful analogies between the eucharistic life of Our Lord and His sacred Infancy, we refer the reader to Father Faber's Treatise on the Blessed Sacrament.

The Mass is truly a "hidden treasure," and, alas, our cold, dead faith allows it to remain so. If we valued it as we ought, we would hurry every morning to the church, ceaseless of the snows of winter and the heats of summer, in order to get a share of the riches of this treasure.

The saints knew the value of one Mass: that it was a dark day in their calendar on which they were deprived of the happy privilege of saying or hearing Mass. Although St. Francis de Sales was overburdened with apostolic work on the Mission of the Chablais, he made it a point never to miss his daily Mass. In order to keep his holy resolution, he had frequently to cross the river Drance, to the village of Marin, in which there was a Catholic church. It happened, in the winter of 1596, that a great freshet carried away a portion of the bridge over the stream, and the passengers were, in consequence, compelled to cross on a plank laid over those arches of the broken structure that had withstood the waters. Heavy falls of snow, followed by severe frosts, made this board very slippery, so that it became dangerous to attempt passing on on it; but St. Francis was not be deterred, for despite the remonstration of his friends, he made the perilous journey every morning, creeping over the icy plank on his hands and feet, thus daily risking his life rather than lose Mass.

Dear Christian reader! beg this glorious saint to obtain for you and me some portion of his burning love for the most holy and adorable sacrifice of the altar. (The American preface to The Hidden Treasure: Holy Mass, by Saint Leonard of Port Maurice.)

 

No, no one who disbelieves in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass practices true Christianity, which is, of course, Catholicism. No baptized Catholic who disbelieves that the Mass is indeed the unbloody re-presentation of the Sacrifice of the Son to the Father in Spirit and in Truth on the wood of the Holy Cross is a Catholic in good standing. We have seen, therefore, a convergence of the dark forces of Protestantism and of Modernism, the former of which which has helped to create and the latter of which has joined the former to sustain a world that can only degenerate over the course of time because of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King and disbelief in the necessity of men and their nations to gather around the Sacrifice of the Cross every day in Holy Mass. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the chief means by which the souls of men are sanctified. It is thus the chief means by which nations can know any semblance of social order as individual men seek to live in this live as befits citizens of Heaven mindful that every one of their actions has an eternal dimension and must be subordinated to the Deposit of Faith that Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church.

Those who want to take false refuge in the assertion that some of the American founders were influenced by "Christian" beliefs have no place to hide as Protestantism is false and thus evil of its very nature. Similarly, those who want to assert that some of the American founders were influenced by the writings of Saint Robert Bellarmine and possibly Saint Thomas Aquinas do not understand or accept the fact that the founders read the writings of various Catholics as understood through the prism of the effects of the Protestant Revolution and the naturalism of the so-called "Enlightenment," not as Holy Mother Church understands these writings.

How do we know how Holy Mother Church views the writings of her saints and other worthy writers who discourse on matters of Church-State relations? We know this from the encyclical letters of our true popes, encyclical letters from which no Catholic may dissent legitimately and remain a Catholic in good standing. Yes, there are some, especially of the libertarian ilk, who seek to disparage the binding nature of Catholic Social Teaching, which means that they do not believe that our true popes "understood" the primary sources as well a they do. Such hubris was condemned as nothing other than social modernism by Pope Pius XI in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:

Many believe in or claim that they believe in and hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority, the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital and labor, on the rights of the laboring man, on the relations between Church and State, religion and country, on the relations between the different social classes, on international relations, on the rights of the Holy See and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff and the Episcopate, on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV.

There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism.

It is necessary ever to keep in mind these teachings and pronouncements which We have made; it is no less necessary to reawaken that spirit of faith, of supernatural love, and of Christian discipline which alone can bring to these principles correct understanding, and can lead to their observance. This is particularly important in the case of youth, and especially those who aspire to the priesthood, so that in the almost universal confusion in which we live they at least, as the Apostle writes, will not be "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive." (Ephesians iv, 14) (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

 

The United States of America was founded by men who were influenced by a variety of false ideas. No matter their "good intentions," my very few readers, false ideas always lead to bad consequences. As Pope Leo XIII noted in Immortale Dei, an ethos of religious indifferentism will always lead to the triumph of a practical spirit of atheism as the lowest common denominator in social discourse as generic references to "God" wrought by the religious indifferentism and naturalism of Judeo-Masonry are pushed aside in favor of no references to "God," no less to the Holy Name of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in public life and popular culture.

The currently reigning caesar, Barack Hussein Obama, is the son of an atheist mother and a Mohammedan man who came to accept Communism over the course of time. He is also the stepson of another Mohammedan man who became a secularist. Although he professes himself some kind of "Christian," he has shown his contempt for how the unwashed masses place their trust in God on several occasions in recent years (see Obama's Dime Store Sociology). And he has also sought to sanitize even the Masonic references to God that exist in the American Declaration of Independence, something that was pointed out by an author who does not realize that the very thing he, the author, exalts, the "religious heritage" of the United States of America, is what has produced the irreligious Barack Hussein Obama:

Sometimes it seems like President Obama just can't catch a break, from the long-faltering economy to the Gulf oil well explosion. But some problems are just of his own making. Nowhere is this more clear than in his clumsy use of religious language. The president cannot stop stumbling over the religious maxims that have defined us as a nation.

Earlier this fall, President Obama repeatedly misquoted the Declaration of Independence, saying "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that each of us are endowed with certain inalienable rights." Why leave out the "Creator"? Doing this once would have gathered no notice. Twice, and the grumbling began. Three times, and people began to wonder whether he had made a conscious decision to reword this founding document, presumably for the purpose of political correctness.

Another misstep came in his speech in Indonesia a month ago, when Obama told the audience that America's national motto was E Pluribus Unum, or "Out of Many, One." Of course, this is incorrect: the national motto, since 1956, is "In God We Trust." (Didn't they teach that at Harvard?) This error would be a minor problem in isolation, but it continues to fuel the growing concern that this president is recasting the ways in which these capacious religious principles have stood at the heart of our national identity. This past week, the Congressional Prayer Caucus filed a letter of protest with the president, asking him to clarify his comments on the national motto and the Declaration.

So is the president's misuse of our God-centered dictums a big deal, or is it just one more example of his enemies piling on when they see a chance? Given our conflicts over America's religious identity, it really is a big deal. First of all, it is important for President Obama not to repeatedly misquote the Declaration of Independence and to incorrectly identify the national motto. But more substantially, his mistakes send a message — hopefully unintentional — that the president wishes to define America as a secular nation.

In 2009, the president generated another controversy when he said that Americans "do not consider [them]selves a Christian nation." To the extent that this means we are not an exclusively Christian nation, he is correct. Religious liberty in America has always sheltered non-Christians under its protective shield. But it is quite another thing to construe America as a secular nation, in which religion — or principles of faith — will have no role in the public sphere. A secular nation is hardly what the Founders intended. Religious principles have always undergirded the nation, and none more so than equality by God's creation.

The notion that "all men are created equal, (and) that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," is indispensable to understanding American history. It is not susceptible to casual modification by the president, or anyone else. This idea assures us that our equality comes from our common standing before God, our Creator, who has endowed us with rights that no one can justly violate.

This principle stood at the heart of our revolution against Britain. In the Gettysburg Address in 1863, Abraham Lincoln said equality by creation was the unique principle to which our nation was dedicated. Martin Luther King, Jr., said that it was America's "creed." We must not let this cherished ideal slip away in the name of politeness or secularism.

In the Christmas season, the question of whether America is fundamentally religious or secular seems even more acute, as small numbers of activists try to have "Christmas" villages and trees re-designated as emblems of an innocuous-sounding "holiday." Meanwhile, millions of Americans wonder whether our country is slowly becoming hostile to all public expressions of faith.

If President Obama does not mean to exacerbate believers' worries about his secular intentions, then he needs to watch his religious language. (Watch Your Religious Language, Mr. President - Thomas Kidd.)

 

Before dissecting the religious indifferentism extant in this article, it is instructive to note that its author, Dr. Thomas Kidd, goes to great lengths to remonstrate Obama for his historical revisionism concerning the Declaration of Independence and the national motto without noting that Obama's White House staff specifically requested that all "signage," including the monograph "IHS," be removed from Gaston Hall at Georgetown University when our reigning caesar spoke there on April 15, 2009. The secular messias, Obama, couldn't share a stage with any reminder of the one and only Messias, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ:

Excellent reporting by the Catholic News Service in recent days (Georgetown Says It Covered Over Name of Jesus, White House, Georgetown Say Covering Over Name of Jesus Was Unintended Consequence of Desire to Have Backdrop for Flags, Georgetown Did Not Cover Over Name of Jesus When First Lady Laura Bush Spoke) has documented the scandal caused by Georgetown University's appeasement of Caesar Obamus, who gave a speech at Georgetown University on Wednesday, April 15, 2009, by the covering up of the initials "IHS," the monogram of the Holy Name of Jesus that was popularized by Saint Vincent Ferrer, O.P., the zealous Dominican friar who converted thousands upon thousands of Jews and Mohammedans in the Iberian Peninsula and southern France at the end of the Thirteenth and the beginning of the Fourteenth Centuries, and by Saint Bernardine of Siena, the great apostle of the Holy Name of Jesus, prior to its being adopted as the monogram of the Society of Jesus by Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

It is, of course, a grave scandal to cover up the Holy Name of Jesus to appease a petty statist who supports the mystical dismemberment and destruction of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the persons of innocent preborn children in their mothers' wombs under cover of the civil law. The fault here, however, rests entirely with the officials of Georgetown University for inviting the pro-abortion, pro-perversity President of the United States of America to speak, no less to accede to the requests made by his representatives to cover up all of the "signage" in the hall where he was scheduled to speak. The fault here, let me repeat, is entirely that of the officials of Georgetown University. (Ashamed of the NAME Above All Names.)

No, "fidelity" to the Masonic references to "nature's God" and the "Creator" and the "Supreme Judge of the Universe" in the Declaration of Independence is more important to note than the demand made by the White House staff for the IHS monogram to be covered up with our caesar spoke there last year. This is a telling commentary on the misplaced loyalties of Americanists. I really don't care about the American "creed." I care about the Apostles' Creed.

That having been noted, the appendices below, included in an article published fifteen days ago, will help to illustrate the confused nature of Dr. Thomas Kidd's Americanist assertions about the role of "religion" in the United States of America.

No, one religion is not as good as another. The belief that a generic concept of God is "good enough" to produce an American "creed" that will bind citizens of different beliefs together as they pursue the common temporal good is delusional and offensive to the true God of Divine Revelation, Who wants each person in the world to be a member in good standing of the Catholic Church who submits with humility and docility to everything He teaches through her. It is that simple.

As I have noted on many other occasions, true pope after true pope has condemned generic references to God. It is not enough to say "In God We Trust," not that Obama wants to say so publicly, you understand. This Masonic slogan--and it is nothing other than a Masonic slogan--reduces the Name of God to some kind of "supreme being" who has not taught us anything in particular and that all that a nation needs to do to receive the blessing of this deity is to invoke his name now and again.

Condemned:

Beware, Venerable Brethren, of that growing abuse, in speech as in writing, of the name of God as though it were a meaningless label, to be affixed to any creation, more or less arbitrary, of human speculation. Use your influence on the Faithful, that they refuse to yield to this aberration. Our God is the Personal God, supernatural, omnipotent, infinitely perfect, one in the Trinity of Persons, tri-personal in the unity of divine essence, the Creator of all existence. Lord, King and ultimate Consummator of the history of the world, who will not, and cannot, tolerate a rival God by His side.

No faith in God can for long survive pure and unalloyed without the support of faith in Christ. "No one knoweth who the Son is, but the Father: and who the Father is, but the Son and to whom the Son will reveal Him" (Luke x. 22). "Now this is eternal life: That they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent" (John xvii. 3). Nobody, therefore, can say: "I believe in God, and that is enough religion for me," for the Savior's words brook no evasion: "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father. He that confesseth the Son hath the Father also" (1 John ii. 23) (Pope Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937.)

Pope Pius XI warned the bishops of Germany to remind the faithful in the country where the Protestant Revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church that they must not yield to the aberration of referring to God in a generic sense as though He is not a Trinity of Three Divine Persons in the Unity of One Godhead or that it does not matter whether the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity became Man by the power of God the Holy Ghost in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of His Most Blessed Mother. Pope Pius XI warned the German bishops, therefore, to remind the faithful that they Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted His Deposit of Faith solely to the Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication and that we must submit to this Deposit of Faith at all times without any reservation, qualification, exception or exemption.

No, the generic references to God that were used by the founders of the United States of America and that have been used repeatedly by public figures since that time as virtually no references are ever made to the Holy Name of Jesus in public life are simply exercises in sloganeering. Truth matters. The true religion matters. Men must be lost without the true religion. They must be lost in a fog of falsehoods and ambiguities and uncertainties all throughout the course of their lives until and unless they convert to the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there is no true social order. 

Why should Barack Hussein Obama have any more respect for the words contained in the final version of the Declaration of Independence than Protestants have for these words spoken by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself:

I am the living bread which came down from heaven. [52] If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world. [53] The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying: How can this man give us his flesh to eat? [54] Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. [55] He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day. (John 6: 51-55.)

 

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was preaching the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, which is rejected by Protestants and by many modernist Catholics. Those who reject the infallible teaching authority of the Catholic Church feel free to to reduce words of the Divine Redeemer into mere symbolism. Why shouldn't Barack Hussein Obama have the same ability to misrepresent the words contained in the Declaration of Independence? Are the words of mere men, contingent beings whose bodies are in the grave until the Last Day, more sacred and beyond alteration than the very words of Sacred Scripture that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church for their infallible explication?

Indeed, a case can be made that Barack Hussein Obama is being true to the text of Thomas Jefferson's "rough draft" of the Declaration of Independence when he, Obama, omitted the word "Creator" in various speeches:

We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable;[2] that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights[3] inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . . (Thomas Jefferson's Original Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence.)

 

Why trifle with "fidelity" to the words in the Declaration of Independence when Thomas Jefferson himself excluded the word "Creator" from his original draft and when one considers that this hideous libertine hated Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church, showing himself to be an enemy of God and thus a menace to any true concept of social order:

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. (Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December, 1813.)

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them. (Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Roger Weigthman, June 24, 1826, ten days before Jefferson's death; see also Not A Mention of Christ the King for a fairly comprehensive discussion of how assiduous most of our presidents have been in refusing to make public mention of the Divine Redeemer, Christ the King, most of the time than their public remarks.)

 

"Fidelity" to Thomas Jefferson? Why not just be "faithful" to the devil who inspired Jefferson to have such a hatred for Our Lord and His true Church?

Barack Hussein Obama is, therefore, simply the "finished product," if you will, of the falsehoods of the American founding.

Furthermore, who can blame Barack Hussein Obama for seeking to "sanitize" public references even to the generic Judeo-Masonic concepts of God that so many Catholics, of all people, mind you, have come to believe are acceptable as they do not "offend" those who deny the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, when the conciliar "pope" and many of his "bishops" do so on a regular basis?

O God of love, compassion, and healing, look on us, people of many different faiths and traditions, who gather today at this site, the scene of incredible violence and pain.

We ask you in your goodness to give eternal light and peace to all who died here— the heroic first-responders: our fire fighters, police officers, emergency service workers, and Port Authority personnel, along with all the innocent men and women who were victims of this tragedy simply because their work or service brought them here on September 11, 2001.

We ask you, in your compassion to bring healing to those who, because of their presence here that day, suffer from injuries and illness. Heal, too, the pain of still-grieving families and all who lost loved ones in this tragedy. Give them strength to continue their lives with courage and hope.

We are mindful as well of those who suffered death, injury, and loss on the same day at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Our hearts are one with theirs as our prayer embraces their pain and suffering.

God of peace, bring your peace to our violent world: peace in the hearts of all men and women and peace among the nations of the earth. Turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred.

God of understanding, overwhelmed by the magnitude of this tragedy, we seek your light and guidance as we confront such terrible events. Grant that those whose lives were spared may live so that the lives lost here may not have been lost in vain. Comfort and console us, strengthen us in hope, and give us the wisdom and courage to work tirelessly for a world where true peace and love reign among nations and in the hearts of all. (Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Prayer Service at Ground Zero, Sunday, April 20, 2008, text from the conciliar Vatican website; see also April 20, 2008 - Ceremony at Ground Zero and All is Quicksand Without Our Lady.)

Thanksgiving is a time of the year when people are open to the Lord, and we don't think about ourselves. We're grateful to God. We're conscious that somebody, some call him or her, whatever you want, somebody beyond us is in charge, and we are immensely grateful. ("Archbishop" Timothy Dolan,Is 'Superman' Catholic?; see also Whatever You Want.)

 

Conciliarism's respect for false religions is such that the late Ron Santo, who played all but one year of his fifteen year major league baseball career with the Chicago Cubs (his final year was with the Chicago White Sox in 1974) and who was the color commentator on Cubs' radio broadcasts for twenty-one seasons (1990-2010), was remembered at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago, Illinois, on Friday, December 10, 2010, not with a Novus Ordo "Mass of Christian Burial" but with an ecumenical prayer service in order to "appeal" to all religions. No, I am not making this up:

Approximately 1,000 people filled Holy Name Cathedral this morning for Cubs legend Ron Santo’s funeral. Among those in attendance were all four Ricketts siblings, Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, Pat Hughes, the Rev. Jessie Jackson, Sr., Ryne Sandberg, Kerry Wood, Glenn Beckert, Fergie Jenkins, Don Kessinger, assorted family members and various Cubs staff.

The service, as explained by Monsignor Dan Mayall, himself a diabetic since his teen years, was not a mass but prayer service to appeal to all religions. Spiritual readings were offered by John J. McDonough from the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and John F. McDonough formerly with the Cubs and now with the Chicago Blackhawks.

Cubs Executive Chairman Tom Ricketts, Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and Santo’s broadcast partner for 15 years Pat Hughes all spoke to those gathered. All three spoke eloquently and lovingly about Santo, about the type of person he was and what he meant to each of them personally. But it was Hughes who by far stole the show with stories about Santo and how the two of them loved to laugh and joke around. He related the time in New York when Santo’s hairpiece caught on fire. Hughes put the fire out by throwing water on Santo’s head. Santo’s response? “How does it look?” Another story entailed a time in Arizona when Santo wanted some frozen yogurt from a machine near the press box. A sign clearly stated not to use the machine before the game stated, but Santo couldn’t wait. Once he had his cup filled, Santo couldn’t turn the machine off. What did he do? He ran! (Just Another Conciliar Yuk Fest.)

 

Just another conciliar yuk fest. A desire to "appeal" to "all religions" was more important than staging the sham that is supposed to be the ordinary liturgy of the faux Roman Rite in the counterfeit church of conciliarism. Please tell me that this is not the direct result of the examples that have been set by the conciliar "popes" and their "bishops," starting with the conciliar "pontiff" himself who personally rejects what he calls disparagingly "the ecumenism of the return" (see Ratzinger's War Against Catholicism.)

Like examples, of course, could go on indefinitely (and have been provided in many articles on this site.)

Apologists of Modernity, no matter their differences on the "shadings" of their brand of religious indifferentism/practical atheism, and apologists of Modernism are of one heart and one mind in rejecting these simple truths as expressed by Pope Pius XI in Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937:

 

Every true and lasting reform has ultimately sprung from the sanctity of men who were driven by the love of God and of men. Generous, ready to stand to attention to any call from God, yet confident in themselves because confident in their vocation, they grew to the size of beacons and reformers.   . No doubt "the Spirit breatheth where he will" (John iii. 8): "of stones He is able to raise men to prepare the way to his designs" (Matt. iii. 9). He chooses the instruments of His will according to His own plans, not those of men. But the Founder of the Church, who breathed her into existence at Pentecost, cannot disown the foundations as He laid them. Whoever is moved by the spirit of God, spontaneously adopts both outwardly and inwardly, the true attitude toward the Church, this sacred fruit from the tree of the cross, this gift from the Spirit of God, bestowed on Pentecost day to an erratic world.

 

Never mistake any form of faux Christianity or generic sense of "American religiosity" for the true Faith as we continue pray for the conversion of those steeped in some kind of false Christianity or any other kind of false religion. Got it? 

We must enfold ourselves into the love of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus as we make reparation for our own many sins, which are so responsible for the worsening of the state of the Church Militant on earth and of the world-at-large, as we seek to restore all things in Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen.

The Rosary, the Rosary, the Rosary. Use it well. The enemies of Christ the King within in our souls and in the counterfeit church of conciliarism will be defeated by Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary and the fulfillment of her Fatima Message.

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

 

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!--this should be the motto of our nation--Long live Christ the King!

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

 

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Appendix A

Pope Pius IX on Modern Civilization: Taking A Different View Than the "Happy" Bishop

In truth, on the face of this earth there is but one true and holy Religion, founded and established by Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself; this Religion – the fecund mother, the nurturer of all virtues, the enemy of vice, the liberator of souls and the mistress of true happiness – is called Catholic, Apostolic and Roman.

We have already spoken about what we should think of those who live outside of this ark of salvation in the consistory allocution of December 9, 1854, and here we confirm that same doctrine.

To those who, for the good of Religion, invite us to extend our hand to contemporary civilization, we ask whether the Vicar of Christ, divinely established by Christ to preserve the purity of His heavenly doctrine and to nourish and confirm His lambs and sheep in this same doctrine, could join forces with contemporary civilization without a very grave danger of conscience and causing the greatest of scandals. For it was this civilization that produced evils so numerous that we could never deplore them sufficiently, as well as so many poisonous opinions, errors and principles which are extremely opposed to the Catholic Religion and her doctrine. (Pius IX, Allocution Jamdudum cernimus, March 18, 1861, in Recueil des Allocutions consistoriales, encycliques et autres lettres apostoliques, Paris: Adrien Leclere, 1865, p. 435, found at  Pope Cannot Accept Modern Civilization.)

Appendix B

Pope Leo XIII on the Masonic Ethos of Toleration of False Religions: Condemning the Conciliar "Popes" and their "Bishops"

Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God. (Pope Leo XIII, Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892.)

Appendix C

Pope Leo XIII on the Duties of Catholics to Defend Catholic Truth in Public: Generic Religiosity Has Nothing to Do with Fidelity to Christ the King

But in this same matter, touching Christian faith, there are other duties whose exact and religious observance, necessary at all times in the interests of eternal salvation, become more especially so in these our days. Amid such reckless and widespread folly of opinion, it is, as We have said, the office of the Church to undertake the defense of truth and uproot errors from the mind, and this charge has to be at all times sacredly observed by her, seeing that the honor of God and the salvation of men are confided to her keeping. But, when necessity compels, not those only who are invested with power of rule are bound to safeguard the integrity of faith, but, as St. Thomas maintains: "Each one is under obligation to show forth his faith, either to instruct and encourage others of the faithful, or to repel the attacks of unbelievers.'' To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind. This kind of conduct is profitable only to the enemies of the faith, for nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good. Moreover, want of vigor on the part of Christians is so much the more blameworthy, as not seldom little would be needed on their part to bring to naught false charges and refute erroneous opinions, and by always exerting themselves more strenuously they might reckon upon being successful. After all, no one can be prevented from putting forth that strength of soul which is the characteristic of true Christians, and very frequently by such display of courage our enemies lose heart and their designs are thwarted. Christians are, moreover, born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph: "Have confidence; I have overcome the world." Nor is there any ground for alleging that Jesus Christ, the Guardian and Champion of the Church, needs not any manner the help of men. Power certainly is not wanting to Him, but in His loving kindness He would assign to us a share in obtaining and applying the fruits of salvation procured through His grace.

The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error. So soon as Catholic truth is apprehended by a simple and unprejudiced soul, reason yields assent. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)

Appendix D

Pope Leo XIII on the Degeneration of Nations Absent the Catholic Faith: We Do Not Give Thanks for Religious "Diversity"

From this it may clearly be seen what consequences are to be expected from that false pride which, rejecting our Saviour's Kingship, places man at the summit of all things and declares that human nature must rule supreme. And yet, this supreme rule can neither be attained nor even defined. The rule of Jesus Christ derives its form and its power from Divine Love: a holy and orderly charity is both its foundation and its crown. Its necessary consequences are the strict fulfilment of duty, respect of mutual rights, the estimation of the things of heaven above those of earth, the preference of the love of God to all things. But this supremacy of man, which openly rejects Christ, or at least ignores Him, is entirely founded upon selfishness, knowing neither charity nor selfdevotion. Man may indeed be king, through Jesus Christ: but only on condition that he first of all obey God, and diligently seek his rule of life in God's law. By the law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law, all of which Jesus Christ has perfected and crowned by His declaration, explanation and sanction; but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institutions. Of these the chief is His Church. Indeed whatsoever things Christ has instituted are most fully contained in His Church. Moreover, He willed to perpetuate the office assigned to Him by His Father by means of the ministry of the Church so gloriously founded by Himself. On the one hand He confided to her all the means of men's salvation, on the other He most solemnly commanded men to be subject to her and to obey her diligently, and to follow her even as Himself: "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me" (Luke x, 16). Wherefore the law of Christ must be sought in the Church. Christ is man's "Way"; the Church also is his "Way"-Christ of Himself and by His very nature, the Church by His commission and the communication of His power. Hence all who would find salvation apart from the Church, are led astray and strive in vain.

As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from "The Way." The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. "And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him" (Daniel vii., 14). "I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men's minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

Appendix E

Pope Leo XIII: We Must Restore Catholicism: The Catholic Way is the Truly American Way!

Just as Christianity cannot penetrate into the soul without making it better, so it cannot enter into public life without establishing order. With the idea of a God Who governs all, Who is infinitely wise, good, and just, the idea of duty seizes upon the consciences of men.  It assuages sorrow, it calms hatred, it engenders heroes. If it has transformed pagan society--and that transformation was a veritable resurrection--for barbarism disappeared in proportion as Christianity extended its sway, so, after the terrible shocks which unbelief has given to the world in our days, it will be able to put that world again on the true road, and bring back to order the states and peoples of modern times. But the return of Christianity will not be efficacious and complete if it does not restore the world to a sincere love of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. In the Catholic Church Christianity is Incarnate. It identifies itself with that perfect, spiritual, and, in its own order, sovereign society, which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and which has for Its visible head the Roman Pontiff, successor of the Prince of the Apostles. It is the continuation of the mission of the Savior, the daughter and the heiress of His Redemption.  It has preached the Gospel, and has defended it at the price of its blood, and strong in the Divine assistance and of that immortality which has been promised it, it makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the commands which It has received, to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect it in its inviolable integrity. Legitimate dispenser of the teachings of the Gospel It does not reveal itself only as the consoler and Redeemer of souls, but It is still more the internal source of justice and charity, and the propagator as well as the guardian of true liberty, and of that equality which alone is possible here below. In applying the doctrine of its Divine Founder, It maintains a wise equilibrium and marks the true limits between the rights and privileges of society. The equality which it proclaims does not destroy the distinction between the different social classes  It keeps them intact, as nature itself demands, in order to oppose the anarchy of reason emancipated from Faith, and abandoned to its own devices. The liberty which it gives in no wise conflicts with the rights of truth, because those rights are superior to the demands of liberty.  Not does it infringe upon the rights of justice, because those rights are superior to the claims of mere numbers or power. Nor does it assail the rights of God because they are superior to the rights of humanity. (Pope Leo XIII, A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902.)